


Never Better, Never Blue (I've got nothing)

by dressedupasmyself



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Magical Creatures, Malfoy Manor, Potions, magical houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dressedupasmyself/pseuds/dressedupasmyself
Summary: “Will you come back?” He had to clear his suddenly scratchy throat. “When he’s… gone?”For the first time, Narcissa’s guard slipped, and Draco could see the true extent of her pain. He was suddenly reminded of the fact that this decision didn’t only affect him. His mother was leaving her family, too.Draco’s hand slipped into Narcissa’s with little effort.“Of course I’ll come back, sweetheart.” She squeezed his hand. “I promise.”
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Rolf Scamander, Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood/Rolf Scamander
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Never Better, Never Blue (I've got nothing)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SouthernContinentSkies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/gifts).



> Massive thank you to therealmuffinman for betaing and keeping me sane. Thank you for staying up much later than is healthy to deal with my inability to handle deadlines like a Responsible Adult. Any leftover mistakes are entirely my own.
> 
> Title taken from the song 'Yoko Ono (Stripped)' by Moby Rich and Matt Maeson (which made me Feel Things at 1 AM).
> 
> Thank you to SouthernContinentSkies for the prompt. I hope I did it justice.

Before they left, his mother had sat him down on a bench outside of the muggle guesthouse they’d been staying in since his father was released from Azkaban into house arrest, on the grounds of being terminally insane and very obviously on the brink of death.

Draco was careful not to show his reluctance at being left to fend for himself. It was no secret that most of the wizarding world had unfavourable opinions of him, and knowing that he could at least count on his mother to stay by his side had kept it from bothering him too much. But now she was leaving and he would be well and truly alone.

“It won’t be as bad as you’re imagining, sweetheart,” Narcissa said. She was using the voice Draco recognised from his childhood, from when his father had scolded him for something unscoldworthy and his mother had been helpless to keep herself from picking up the pieces. “You heard what Potter said at your trial. You’re not your father. You shouldn’t have to live with his sins as a target on your chest.”

“It’s too late,” Draco managed to press through his teeth, the words not quite liquid enough to flow with any kind of ease. “The day Father took the Mark, he might as well have carved it into both of us, too.” He tried not to fidget with his left sleeve.

Narcissa fixed him with a stern look. “Draco, you know as well as I do that you’ve never been stupid. Don’t let your fear convince you to start, now.”

He had been determined to keep his composure. His jaw clenched, and _fuck it_ , he couldn’t look at his mother anymore. He swallowed thickly. “Don’t go. I don’t have anyone else.”

Narcissa’s hand was soft against his cheek. “You’ll find someone, darling, but not if your father and I are close enough to drag you down. You need to figure out all that you can be without the ghost of your family name following you around wherever you go.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” Draco insisted. “I could come with you.”

He didn’t like Marseille. It was too sunny all the time and much too warm, even if his French was flawless. At that moment, though, he’d take some excessive sweating over the train wreck that was his life in England.

“Listen to me,” Narcissa insisted, her voice steadying into the authoritative tone Draco had never been able to disobey. “Do you remember when Healer Bell took out your baby tooth when you were eight?”

He nodded reluctantly.

“At first, I remember seeing your tongue dipping into the gap where it used to be every second. And you never seemed to hear a thing I said while you were doing it. It infuriated me to no end.”

Draco remembered. He’d never been chastised for anything as repetitively and consistently as he had for that particular habit.

“Eventually, you stopped noticing that it wasn’t there. And because the tooth that had been hurting you was removed, it made room for a new, healthier one to take its place.”

“You’re saying that you and Father are rotten teeth,” Draco deadpanned, not impressed with the overused metaphor. “I’m not eight anymore. You don’t need to talk in circles. I understand what you’re trying to do, but it’s not necessary. I won’t be left behind by the only family I have left.”

Narcissa sighed. “This isn’t up for debate, darling. You’re very welcome to visit, of course, but you’re not running away. It’s unbecoming of the family name.”

Draco tried not to laugh. He knew the sound would only be bitter, and if his mother was really leaving him soon, he didn’t want to ruin their last few moments. “You’re being hypocritical.”

Narcissa’s expression turned sympathetic. “It’s too late for your father. You know that. He deserves the opportunity to spend his last moments in a place where he doesn’t have to stay inside to avoid being harassed on the street. Let me give it to him, sweetheart.”

He’d known, of course, that his father didn’t have much time left. Hearing it phrased in such a straightforward way, though, made something unpleasant crawl into his veins.

“Will you come back?” He had to clear his suddenly scratchy throat. “When he’s… gone?”

For the first time, Narcissa’s guard slipped, and Draco could see the true extent of her pain. He was suddenly reminded of the fact that this decision didn’t only affect him. His mother was leaving her family, too.

Draco’s hand slipped into Narcissa’s with little effort.

“Of course I’ll come back, sweetheart.” She squeezed his hand. “I promise.”

Later, when he watched her hair sway along the thin lines of her back as she walked away from him, he couldn’t help but feel like every single tooth in his mouth had been knocked loose, and he wasn’t sure where to begin in dealing with the subsequent mess.

He decided to start with the Manor.

It seemed like the logical next step. If he was going to run his tongue through the gaps, he might as well dive right into the biggest one.

The Manor loomed before him like a yellow-bricked reminder of everything he’d lost. It stung in that faint, knee-buckling way that started out in the bottom of his throat and eventually left him struggling to breathe around the intrusion.

He’d never lived anywhere else. He’d been born here, raised here, nearly torn to shreds here, and it had always been his assumption that, should he fail to create himself a Philosopher’s Stone in time, this would also be where he died. His magic would join those of his ancestors, and he’d silently judge the next generations from his comfortable spot on the wall as they failed to live up to the ridiculously large shoes he’d left for them to fill.

That dream had never felt further away.

The door creaked slightly as he pushed it open. Everything about the sound was wrong. No door in the Manor ever creaked, no floorboard ever squeaked. _If a Manor is noisy_ , his father had drawled at him on numerous occasions, _it means that the Lord or Lady have lost their grip on the ancestral magic._

And Lucius wasn’t around to glare the upholstery into fluffing itself up, anymore.

Nevertheless, Draco scraped together the last of his resolve and stepped into the entrance hall.

He didn’t linger, immediately heading for the staircase at a brisk pace. There would be a time for him to walk the Manor edge to edge, claiming it for himself as the new Lord, but for now, he only had one goal in mind.

His mother had tackled the worst of the mess in the immediate silence that followed Voldemort’s death. Surprisingly, it had taken a few days for the Aurors to show up at their door. Draco still couldn’t remember much of what happened in that timeframe, but he remembered feeling cold. Narcissa had allowed him to help with the less vile rooms, and he’d flung around cleaning charms through the comforting layer of his thickest, scratchiest sweater. It might have been a gift from his Great Aunt Walburga to his father at one point, but it was undesirable enough to have made its way into Draco’s clutches.

And he was nothing if not a sentimental fool, so he’d hung on to it.

It was this same sentimentality that kept him from running at the sight of his spotless bedroom. It was pride, more than anything, that had sparked Narcissa into her cleaning frenzy. They’d all known that it was only a matter of time before the Aurors showed up to arrest them, and they would all be damned if the Manor was in anything less than the pristine state it normally was when that time came.

Draco had pretended not to notice the green tinge that clung to Narcissa’s skin whenever he ran into her, the set of her mouth leaving little of what she’d found to the imagination. He’d handed her warm tea with shaking fingers and got right back to work.

And so it was relatively easy, at least, for Draco to spell all his possessions into his old school trunk. The sight of the trunk seemed to transport him back to a much simpler time, when his biggest concerns were beating Harry Potter at Quidditch and sneaking around behind Severus’ back. It made it a little easier to breathe through the process.

He’d just managed a lightening spell to lessen the burden of a lifetime of shrunken possessions when he was interrupted by a cough behind him.

It had been so quiet around him for such a long time that he jumped at the sound.

The flash of blonde tucked between the abstract shapes of the painting that hung against his wall didn’t do much to let him know which of his family he was dealing with. He straightened up, tucking his discomfort tightly against his chest. There weren’t many Malfoys that he trusted to see him in a position of weakness. Even as a child, he’d known that it was important for them to see him as a worthy heir. They controlled the magic of the Manor, after all, and they weren’t likely to trust him with it if he came across as spineless and scared.

He was sure that all of his hard work in that regard had been rendered useless by Voldemort’s stay, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least make an effort to get it back.

“Draco.” The shapes shifted, and Draco could imagine the flip of hair that would have been clear as day in any other canvas. He relaxed minutely. “I was hoping to see you again.”

“Aunt Eurydice,” he greeted. “I like what you’ve done with your nose.”

Eurydice Malfoy had been his ally among the portraits ever since he was able to walk around the Manor by himself. Some of his more dubious ancestors had taken great pleasure in ‘toughening up the heir’, much to Narcissa’s displeasure. Draco as a child had been incessantly curious and easily bored, which didn’t make him the best candidate for staying put when there was an entire Manor to explore.

Eurydice had found him being traumatised by her father-in-law’s stories of his time as a Hit Wizard, and coaxed Draco to her own portrait with promises of tea and less violent tales of her own life.

He soon made a habit of sitting cross-legged on the floor by her portrait, staring up at her in awe as she entertained him from her comfortable high-backed chair.

She was exquisitely beautiful and aware of it. She held herself with the air of someone who knew they were noticed by most people in the room. Draco used to watch her interact with guests, and he thought that what really made her stand out, regardless of her beauty, was how she treated everyone around her like they, too, were utterly stunning.

There were times that he almost wished he could have been born just three generations earlier so he might have known her as more than a magical rendition of what she once was.

“Silly child,” she said fondly. “I must say, I expected you back much earlier than this.”

Draco sat down on the edge of his bed. “I’m not staying long.”

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought that two of the vaguely eye-like shapes flicked in the direction of his trunk.

“I see.” Her tone turned wary. “Where will you go, my child?”

His throat tightened at the familiar epithet, and his hand shook when he brought it up to tug almost helplessly at his hair. “They’re all gone, Aunt Eurydice. I have no one left.”

“I hardly think that’s true.” The way she said it in such a matter-of-fact way was almost enough to break through Draco’s despair. Almost.

“It is, though.” Draco stood, too agitated to remain seated. “Mother and Father are in France. Severus is dead, and I’m pretty much just waiting for Mother’s letter telling me that Father - “ He cut himself off, unable to bear that particular train of thought just yet. “All of my school friends are either hiding away somewhere, in jail or fucking _dead_ , and for some reason I don’t have the luxury of running away. I just want to _leave_. I don’t belong here.”

“You want to leave,” Eurydice echoed. It was impossible for Draco to get a read on her emotions, especially since he couldn’t see her face. “Tell me, child, where exactly do you want to go?”

“I don’t care, as long as it’s not here where I have no one and I can’t go shopping without people spitting at me and I can’t live in my own house because the floors keep creaking and I know it won’t go away until Father is dead and I can’t even _think_ about that because every time I look at my arm,” he gestured vaguely to where the Mark still sat, “I think about how he _begged_ me to give up Potter, and maybe if I had, he’d still be okay.”

Draco swallowed, aware that he was rambling and unable to stop. “But I also keep thinking about how this whole mess is his fault. He dragged Mother and I into this and I didn’t even get any choice in whether or not I wanted a homicidal lunatic to brand me with this… _thing_ . So why is it that everybody else gets to _leave_ , even when their choices were worse than mine, but I can’t do the same?”

“Draco.” Eurydice’s voice was firmer now. “Where do you want to go?”

“Why do you keep asking that?” Draco snapped. “I just don’t want to be here anymore.”

He felt better after admitting it, if a little guilty for taking it out on his favourite great-grandmother. It reminded him of when he was twelve, in the midst of an ugly temper tantrum that made his mother cry and his father go purple all along his collar. He’d been banished to an empty room to calm down, even though being denied the attention he so craved was like casting an aguamenti at raging fiendfire.

Eurydice had talked him through his feelings then, offering herself as a target to be lashed out at. Draco is sure that, had it not been for her calm logic and persistence in gently manipulating him until he agreed with her, his father might have strangled him with his bare hands.

He might not be twelve anymore, but he still needed his family.

“Oh, child,” Eurydice sighed. “It does not matter how far you run. These things you are trying to abandon will follow. At this point, I am afraid that the only way out may be through.”

Draco sat back down, his anger fizzled out into reluctant acceptance. “I don’t want to.”

“I know.”

He found a place to stay right on the border between the Muggle and Wizarding areas of Rotherhithe. While he was renting from a begrudging, hump-backed old wizard who was clearly more in need of the income than he was interested in judging Draco’s morals, most of his neighbours seemed to be Muggle.

It took him three days to turn the empty rooms into a somewhat liveable space. One of those days involved a traumatising trip to a nearby Muggle furniture store. He’d barely been wandering the confusing aisles for ten minutes when he decided that maybe placing an order by owl with the furniture shop in Carkitt Market might be a better idea.

Fortunately, the owner of the shop had a similar mindset to Draco’s new landlord and, as long as he didn’t physically appear in her shop, she was more than willing to do business with him.

Draco wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that his money was still as effective at worming past ethical objections as it had been in his father’s time. While the hypocrisy of it all made him slightly sick to the stomach, it was something he could use to his advantage in his quest to rebuild his reputation. And anything that might help him do that, well, he still remained a Slytherin at heart.

The next thing he had to do, he realised one night as he sat on his newly procured sofa, was to find something to do. While he had access to the sizable Malfoy Vaults in Gringotts and could keep living quite comfortably from it for at least the next ten years, he also knew that hiding in his flat wouldn’t do any more good than moving to an obscure country. The fact that he’d spent the last nine days rearranging the same set of books on his shelf and wearing out the carpet that ran from the living room to the kitchen with his frequent case of boredom-munchies made it clear that Malfoys weren’t made for the sedentary lifestyle.

He still hadn’t set foot in a Wizarding area since he moved in. It felt like a bigger step than he was ready for, even though he knew that he would have to, eventually, especially since he liked the idea of getting a Muggle job even less.

With how well his owl-ordered furniture quest had gone, he set out the next day to write some more letters.

He took his time with it, allowing his elegant script to flow with careful deliberation onto the thick parchment. It was more dramatic than strictly necessary, but Draco figured that any potential employers should know what they’re getting into if they decide to hire him.

With no N.E.W.T.s to his name, he was eternally thankful that his O.W.L.s had gone as well as it had. He’d been second in their class, after all, and under normal circumstances, he would be the one on the receiving end of the letters instead of the other way around.

After sending the letters to the post office by Floo, he went for a walk. He was beginning to see the charm in the constantly bustling streets of London. Even though he wasn’t anywhere near the centre of the city, the residential area he’d settled down in seemed to be filled with some sort of movement at all times. He liked the feeling of being sucked into a crowd, even if most of them happened to be Muggles.

He’d liked it so much that he braved the Underground the very next day when his anxiety at having not received any replies to his letters got the better of him. It was a stressful experience, but not nearly as bad as he’d always imagined.

By the time he got back, feeling slightly sweaty and the good kind of exhausted that came from being pushed out of your comfort zone, there was a single letter waiting for him on the mat in front of the fireplace.

Draco had never been to J. Pippin’s Potions before. Aside from the fact that his father had contracts with Slug and Jiggers, making it the Malfoy family apothecary of choice, Severus had always been willing to brew any of the potions they needed out of the goodness of his darkly gilded soul.

J. Pippin’s Potions was located nearly at the point where Diagon Alley became Carkitt Market. Draco would have preferred somewhere even further away from the main street, but he knew that he was in no position to be picky.

He made sure to Apparate as close to the shop as he could (which he thought was very impressive, considering he’d never been there), then ducked in through the greenish-blue door without looking to see if he’d been spotted.

For all intents and purposes, Draco Malfoy had been exonerated of all crimes through a majority voting by the Wizengamot. As good as it had felt to have the very actions for which he felt so guilty be disregarded as juvenile self defence in a dangerous familial environment, the relief had only lasted as long as it had taken him to be escorted out of the courtroom and released of his binding spells. Because, while the Wizengamot might have reached their verdict, the rest of the Wizarding population didn’t necessarily agree.

It was this unhidden hostility that made nervousness bubble up from the bottom of Draco’s stomach as he carefully rang the bell that sat on the counter.

He looked around while he waited, taking in the displays of various jarred animal parts that lined the walls, as well as the absolute chaos of pieces of parchment and haphazardly arranged bottles of potion that seemed to surround the bell he’d just rang.

“Oh, thank Merlin.”

Draco looked up and was met with a tall stack of books, behind which seemed to be a wizard of average length, though Draco had no information to validate that statement other than the pair of blue eyes that were watching him with frantic relief over the top of the stack.

“Er – hi,” Draco greeted, unsure of the proper way to act in this situation. “I’m Draco Malfoy, I’m here for a job interview.”

“Oh, sure.” The stack of books was dropped onto the floor behind the counter, and when the wizard straightened himself back up, Draco could see the true extent of his desperation in the wideness of his eyes and the ruffled material of his robe. “Tell you what, if you can make sense of,” he waved his hand vaguely over the mess on the counter, confusion clear as day on his face, “all of this, you’re hired.”

Draco raised an eyebrow. Never one to beat around the bush, he asked, “You don’t want to talk about my family?”

The wizard leaned his hands onto the counter and fixed Draco with a ‘fuck my life’-expression. “Listen, mate. I’m a Magizoologist. I flunked potions the entire three years I was forced to take it, and I’m not about to start caring about clockwise stirs, or whatever bloody else my uncle wrote on these bottles, just because he’s no longer around. As far as I know, you’re not currently in prison or wanted for murder, are you?”

Draco shook his head, and Rolf made a ‘there you go’ gesture. Draco hesitated for only a moment longer, then carefully rolled up his sleeves. “Let me see what I can do.”

It took him the entire day, minus a quick lunch break in which Rolf (of the Scamander variety, interestingly enough) forced a delicious bowl of noodles down Draco’s throat on account of him ‘looking malnourished’.

Rolf’s uncle had been nearly as meticulous as Draco when it came to labelling and noting down every detail of his work, causing the entire process of making sense of the chaos to be nearly painless. It might have been entirely painless, even, if it hadn’t been for Rolf’s previous attempts at making sense of it himself. He seemed to have more of a cavalier approach to things, which Draco respected but didn’t allow on his side of the counter.

All the while, Rolf talked.

Draco now knew all about the digestive system of Mokes, Rolf’s weird attraction to knees, why imps are better than Pixies, and how Rolf’s uncle died and left him in charge of the shop.

“Wars just don’t differentiate, you know,” Rolf had told him, seemingly unperturbed as he leafed through a gossip magazine that Draco had declared unfit to be included in the already sizable book collection. “Maybe there was someone else who would have liked to inherit something like this, and the war could have easily killed their uncle, instead. But it went for mine, and now I have no other choice but to sit here among the nasty reminders of how cruel some people are willing to be to get what they want.”

Draco had been momentarily worried that Rolf’s statement had referred to his presence, but the nasty glare Rolf shot in the direction of the jarred animal parts alleviated his fears.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Draco had told him, his fingers stilling among the pile of scribbled-on parchment that he was sorting through. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was another death his family was at least partly responsible for.

“Don’t be sorry, Draco.” Rolf’s blue eyes seemed to look straight through him. “I can tell that you feel guilty. Guilt makes us say sorry to all the wrong people for things that aren’t ours to be sorry for, because you know that you haven’t said the one sorry that you should have.”

Draco wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but it didn’t matter, since Rolf came across a very interesting article on how the drummer from the Weird Sisters had been caught in flagrante with the lead singer’s wife. Draco resumed his sorting while halfway paying attention to the article Rolf was now reading aloud, his thoughts churning at a mile a minute.

When they eventually left that afternoon, Rolf gave the much neater shop a quick glance (not enough to assess the true quality of Draco’s work, but Draco decided to brush that off) and held out his hand for Draco to shake.

“You’re hired, Mr. Malfoy.”

In the weeks that followed, Draco slowly started finding his footing.

He spent most days at work, brewing in the backroom or filling out the paperwork needed for some more regulated potions.

Rolf refused to touch anything that wasn’t directly related to customer service, which they’d both agreed might be better suited to someone without a Dark Mark on their arm. Despite this agreement, Rolf tended to disappear for hours on end, leaving Draco to talk to the odd walk-in customer.

The overall reaction to his presence was hesitant, at first. Some asked for Rolf but settled for Draco’s service instead without too much fuss after he’d explained his co-worker’s absence as best he could ( _creature related emergency_ seemed to do the trick nine times out of ten, even if Rolf could have been having the time of his life at a brothel, for all Draco knew). Others had a harder time accepting him, reacting with various levels of emotion at the sight of him.

It was fine. Draco was learning to handle the glares and whispers. He had even started Apparating closer to the main street and walking the remaining distance. He liked the quietness of the early morning. Some of the employees at the other shops had started waving to him as he walked past.

His flat was starting to feel more like home, too, even though he was spending less time there. Draco thought that it was maybe _because_ he spent less time there that he liked it so much more, since it had become a place of refuge rather than the cage he’d locked himself in. He’d even made the effort, with Rolf’s help, to set up a few plants in the living room.

Draco’s favourite room in the Manor had been the conservatory. Out of everything, he thought that he missed the Manor gardens and the sight of his mother’s carefully cultivated roses the most. He’d mentioned it to Rolf one day, not intending for it to spark any particular action, but Rolf had apparently taken it a lot deeper than Draco intended.

There had been a knock on Draco’s door one Saturday morning. He’d opened it to reveal Rolf in a deep discussion with his next-door neighbour, who seemed in a hurry to leave, but not wanting to hurt Rolf’s feelings. Draco smiled at her with an understanding nod, then turned to Rolf.

“What are you doing here?” Draco interrupted their discussion, diverting Rolf’s attention to himself. His neighbour (Madison, he thought, that was her name) shot him a grateful smile and practically ran down the stairs.

“We’re going to the nursery.”

“What?”

Rolf fixed him with an unimpressed glare. “Don’t act dumb, Draco, we both know you’re a massive enough nerd to know what that word means.”

Draco was still slightly confused, having planned to do nothing but laundry with his rare day off, since there was nothing sensitive brewing in the shop that required his constant attention.

“Isn’t that a little pot/kettle?” Draco asked. “Now tell me, in more than five words, why you’re at my house right now.”

Rolf rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “You said you missed having plants around, so I asked around and found a place where we can get some. Are you interested?”

Draco took a second to respond, not because he needed to think about it, but because he liked the dramatic effect. “Yes. Let me grab my shoes.”

Rolf might like magical creatures more than plants, but he sure got excited at the sight of that many flowers in one place.

“They’re magical,” Rolf said.

“You’re a wizard,” Draco deadpanned.

“Which is why I believe in magic.”

Draco indulged him for a few moments, trailing behind as his friend’s excitement grew (because they were definitely friends, at this point, not even Draco could find a way to deny it), before leaving Rolf behind to find more helpful assistance.

Draco hadn’t been expecting to run into Neville Longbottom as he passed by one of the greenhouses.

Neville gave him a strange look, and Draco suspected that it was because of his deer-in-the-headlights expression.

“Uhm, Longbottom, hello.”

Neville wiped his hands on a piece of cloth. Draco noticed the large amount of dirt that clung to his clothing but decided not to mention it.

“Draco Malfoy.”

Draco let out his breath in a rush. “I’m sorry.”

Neville raised an eyebrow. “For?”

“Everything. For how I treated you in school, for what Bellatrix did to your parents, for how my choices affected you.” Draco had been thinking a lot of all the apologies he owed, ever since the conversation he had with Rolf. Now that he had the opportunity, all those thoughts were running together. “I know you have every right to be angry with me for the rest of your life, but I’m trying to be a better person, and I would appreciate it if you could forgive me.”

Neville nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. “Sure, Malfoy.”

“Hey, Draco, how do you feel about plants with teeth?” Rolf shoved a frankly terrifying looking plant under Draco’s nose, making him flinch back. “Oh, hey Neville. How are you?”

Neville relaxed enough around his apparent friend to recommend better options than Mindy, Rolf’s new favourite Fanged Geranium, for Draco’s living room.

That night, as Draco sat in the peacefulness of his flat, looking at his plants that weren’t quite the same as the ones in the Manor conservatory, but close enough to make him feel warm inside, he thought about how much better he felt. Even though his attempt at an apology to Longbottom had been mediocre at best, it had helped to alleviate some of the guilt he was still carrying around with him.

The next time he visited the Manor was a week after his run-in with Neville. If he thought the creaking had been bad before, it was nothing compared to what lay before him now.

The entire building was _drooping_. Draco couldn’t find a better word for it. The garden seemed to be overrun with weeds, the previously neat lawn growing unruly without a stern hand to keep it in check. The front door swung open without much trouble, and the portraits blinked at him with slow, sleepy eyes.

He took a left through the living room, up the stairs, to the right, down the corridor that led to the library.

She was beautiful as ever, of course. Draco felt some of his concern ease when her eyes focused in on him, the lack of her usual teasing grin the only sign that something was wrong.

“Aunt Eurydice,” Draco called.

She blinked slowly. Draco tried not to think of what it meant that the Manor’s magic had faded enough for the portraits to be close to a vegetative state. The Manor was still linked to his father’s magic and would continue to deteriorate with Lucius’s health. Draco knew that he would feel it when the core attached itself to his own magic, but until that day came, he was determined to push it to the back of his mind.

His focus now was on reviving the family that was still there for him.

Carefully, he ran his wand along the side of the frame. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, and he technically shouldn’t start doing it until he was Lord of the Manor, but he couldn’t leave Eurydice like this. He was selfish and he needed her.

He took a breath, searched inside himself for the calm buzzing that he knew to be his magic, and with a little focus, felt it trickle down his arm. Nothing visible seemed to be happening, but Draco knew it had to be working.

“Draco, stop.”

Eurydice’s voice made him blink, tugging back on his magic to keep it from continuing to spill.

“Good evening,” Draco greeted sheepishly. “Did you have a nice nap?”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Waking you?”

He’d always tried to mimic that particular glare of hers, but he never quite seemed to manage it the way she did. He figured a thousand years of practice had to have its benefits.

“It’s not time yet.”

“I know.” Draco let himself sink down onto the floor, so he sat with his back to the wall next to the portrait. “I don’t want it to be time yet.”

“Oh, child.” Her voice sounded resigned now. “Lucius really doesn’t have much time left, does he?”

Draco squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He didn’t want to think about this.

“I apologised to Neville Longbottom last week,” he said, trying to change the subject. He told Eurydice all about the epiphany he had, and his plan for dishing out some more apologies.

“What about the girl?” Eurydice asked.

Draco stilled. “What girl?”

“You know who I’m talking about. You snuck her the apple painting from your father’s study.”

He’d nearly forgotten about doing that. He’d felt so helpless at the time. Arranging for Luna to have someone to talk to other than Ollivander would have seemed insignificant, if it hadn’t been for the way Draco himself had clung to his mother’s presence in that time. In conditions as bad as those Voldemort had created, even the smallest of improvements went a long way, even if Draco still felt that he could have done a lot more. “Thank you for going to see her.”

“The poor child.” Eurydice’s voice turned sad. “I love all my children, of course, but that Abraxas was a piece of work.”

Draco turned slowly so he could see the portrait. If she was implying what he thought she was, he had much more than an apology to share with Luna Lovegood.

“What are you referring to?”

“Your grandfather, Abraxas,” Eurydice said, her forehead straining into a disapproving frown. “He had a will that bent for no one other than himself. I often wish that I’d lived long enough to interfere with his children.”

“What happened?”

“Abraxas had a daughter. She was his firstborn. She had a head of hair on her, from the day she was born. It curled wildly, and I remember thinking when I met her that she would have a spirit to match. Of course, I died before I could watch her grow up properly, but I sure did love that tiny thing for the short while I knew her.”

It was strange to hear Eurydice talk about her life in such a wistful tone. She was an optimist at heart, and it was very rare for her to focus on anything other than the beautiful parts of her life, of which there were many.

“Couldn’t you still talk to her?”

“Abraxas,” Eurydice began, “he didn’t like having his mother peeking over his shoulder. I was banished to the attic for many years during his rule. I heard enough from the other portraits to know what he did.”

“What did he do?”

“Pandora Malfoy, was her name. She sorted Ravenclaw.”

“Abraxas didn’t like it?”

“Two of Abraxas’s first cousins had sorted Gryffindor. They were the children of my husband Enceladus’s younger brother. Oh, did we enjoy watching Balaurius’s antics. He was a healer, you know, and a very good one, at that. But he had very little time for propriety, and we all knew his children would have a quirk to them.

“Nobody minded, of course. Enceladus was Lord of the Manor and he had his own heir, so Balaurius was free to raise his children as he pleased. Nevertheless, Abraxas had a lot of opinions on his cousins.”

“I assume they weren’t good.”

Eurydice let out a bitter laugh. “Nobody warns you before you become a parent. They don’t tell you how much you’re going to love that child. They also don’t say anything about the possibility of giving everything you have to raise a child, only to have them grow out of their compassion.”

Not for the first time, Draco was glad that he hadn’t been born a generation earlier. Lucius had been far from the perfect father, but Draco always knew that he was loved. He doubted whether he would have had the same privilege if raised by Abraxas.

“What happened to Pandora?”

Eurydice hesitated. “Abraxas burned her name from the family tree on her seventeenth birthday. She never came back.”

“But you know where she went?” Draco pushed. He could tell she was holding something back.

“Abraxas could get over her sorting, but he disapproved of the company she kept. Of course, at that point he had already named Lucius as his official heir, so it shouldn’t have mattered. She was pregnant out of wedlock, and the baby’s father was the son of a Mudblood. He couldn’t have that kind of smear on the family name. He told her never to come back, and she didn’t. She got married a month later, changed her name. She didn’t want anybody to know she was a Malfoy any more than Abraxas did. She always was a bit eccentric, poor thing, but being cut off from her brother and everything she knew took its toll.”

“The wizard she married,” Draco said slowly, “It was Xenophilius Lovegood, wasn’t it?”

“That name does seem familiar, yes.” Eurydice sighed. “I recognised Pandora’s eyes in the girl, when you sent me to keep her company.”

“I have a cousin,” Draco said slowly, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. It felt a little like he was treading through the thick sludge in the moors on the edge of the Manor grounds, trying to make sense of it all. He’d always thought that if he should have cousins, they would be on his mother’s side of the family. Even back then, the idea of Bellatrix’s child made him uneasy. “But the timing doesn’t make sense. If Pandora was already pregnant when she left, it couldn’t have been with Luna.”

“I’m afraid that’s as much as I know, child.”

Draco stayed a while longer, telling Eurydice about his job and his new friend Rolf. It was no surprise that she had known Rolf’s grandmother, and telling Draco about the Scamander family seemed to cheer her up considerably. His thoughts never strayed far from the story he’d just heard, even if he took care not to bring it up again.

Eventually, the magic he’d lent her wore off and she went back to sleep. Draco left, still feeling off kilter after everything he’d learned.

Draco was distracted at work the next few days, enough for Rolf to notice.

“Your cauldron is on fire,” Rolf drawled at one point, not even looking up from the drawing he was making of his new (terrifying) pet. Rolf had invited Draco over to his house for dinner on numerous occasions, but Draco had yet to accept on the basis of being too scared of losing any of his appendages to some of the dubious creatures Rolf no doubt had laying all over the place.

“What?” Draco spun around in alarm, but everything was just as he’d left it five minutes ago. He turned his glare on Rolf. “What did you do that for?”

Rolf grinned. “Gotcha. Now you have to tell me why you’ve been so distracted.”

“I’m not distracted.”

“Why bother lying, Draco, when we both _know_ ,” he sniffed dramatically, “you’re full of shit. I recognise the scent, you see, since I work so closely with it all day.”

Draco rolled his eyes, stirring the large batch of Pepper-Up once, clockwise. Winter was approaching, and one could never have too much Pepper-Up once the snow started to fall.

“Is it that pretty neighbour of yours?”

“What?” Draco barely remembered who Rolf was talking about. “No.”

Rolf abandoned his drawing to give Draco his full attention. “I won’t push if you really don’t want me to, but I know you. You don’t handle bottled up emotions very well. You’re more of a dramatic soliloquy kind of guy.”

Draco muttered something under his breath that might have been along the lines of _fucking infuriating piece of shit_ , but after making sure his potion would be fine without him babying it for twenty minutes, he sat down next to Rolf.

“I have a cousin,” Draco announced, “And before you get all happy about it, I used to steal her shoes when we were in school and leave them in hard-to-reach places for her to find. Also, she was kept a prisoner in the Malfoy cellar for months, and all I could do to help her was sneak her some extra food and convince a painting to keep her company.”

“When did you find out?” Rolf asked, eyes kind. “That she’s your cousin, I mean.”

“Over the weekend,” Draco admitted. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “I’ve been obsessed with the idea of apologising to her for months. It’s ten times worse, now.”

“Why is it worse?”

“Because I should have-“ Draco cut himself off, trying to articulate properly. “I mean, I always should have tried harder to get her out, but if I had known…”

“What would you have been able to do differently, Draco? Even if you had known back then, what else could you have done?” Rolf frowned. “I never saw You-Know-Who with my own eyes. All I know is the stories I’ve heard from you and Neville and honestly, I’m not too sure I would have made it if I’d been his roommate for as long as you were.”

Draco balked at the phrasing. It didn’t feel like Voldemort had lived with them. It didn’t feel like much of anything at all, if he was honest with himself. He’d shut so much of that time out through sheer necessity to cope. Thinking back, it was like he was viewing someone else’s tampered memories in a Pensieve.

“What do I even say to her?” Draco wondered. “I don’t think she knows.”

“If there’s one thing I know about family,” Rolf said, “It’s that they’re both our greatest blessing, and our greatest curse. What makes them so great, though, is that no matter what happens, they kind of don’t have a choice in sticking by you.” He gestured around himself. “Like me, sticking around the most boring thing I’ve ever encountered for my uncle’s sake.”

“You barely even look at any potions,” Draco argued. “How does it have time to bore you when you’re not even here half the time, and when you are, you’re either gossiping or doing something else?”

“It’s a figure of speech.” Rolf lifted his chin stubbornly. “You can’t argue with me, I’m your boss.”

“Oh? What are you going to do, fire me? You wouldn’t know the difference between Pepper-Up and Nightshade if I weren’t here.”

Rolf watched him with a blank look that confirmed Draco’s words.

“Let me give you a hint: one of them is a deadly poison, the other will cure the common cold.”

They continued their bickering until Rolf decided he was hungry and went in search of lunch. Draco had no doubt that he would bring some back for him, too. For some reason, the thought made him happy.

Draco did feel better after talking to Rolf. He still had no idea what he was going to say to Luna, but he was a Malfoy. He’d figure it out. That was kind of their whole thing.

Luna’s house looked like her.

Draco took his time walking up the drive, partly because he was nervous, but also to take in the beauty of it.

It was lightly coloured, a contrast to the dark monstrosity that he knew to be her childhood home. It was all done in pale, earthy tones that complimented each other in a way that seemed sophisticated and whimsical at the same time. If he paid attention, he could make out little details that gave her up, such as the Dirigible Plums planted all along the winding path.

He didn’t know Luna as well as he could have. He wished he did. He wished he knew her the way he knew, now, to move Rolf’s mug away from the side of the counter, or the way he could brew tea exactly the way his mother liked it without having to think twice about it. He wished he knew what mood she would be in at the end of the day based on the robes she wore at the start of it, the way he did with his father. He wished he knew her the way family should, so that he could look at her house and understand _why_ it looked like her, instead of just knowing so, at an instinctual level.

He knew, of course, that lingering in the garden wouldn’t magically bring them closer together, so he continued until he was close enough to knock on the door. The handle was in the shape of a seashell, and he wondered if there was a reason for it, or if Luna just liked the way it looked.

It didn’t take long for Luna to open the door.

And for the first time in his life, Draco had no idea what to say.

Luna’s head tilted in silent curiosity. Then she smiled. “Hello, Draco. Would you like to come in?”

Draco nodded. He felt shy, suddenly, and it was so unlike him that he kept his gaze on his shoes until he was firmly inside.

“Do you want tea? Or a sandwich, perhaps?”

Draco looked up to give her an answer when he noticed the room, properly, for the first time. He felt his mouth open (without his consent), and quickly slammed it shut.

He knew he was standing in Luna’s living room. He’d seen the walls, the door, the roof from outside. But if he hadn’t gone through the traumatizing process of being invited inside, he might have sworn that they were still outside.

The ceiling was charmed, much like the Hogwarts Great Hall, to reflect the brightly sunny winter’s morning. The room held furniture; a couch, two armchairs and a coffee table, with a pretty blue rug running beneath it. The floor was dark wood, giving the impression that they were standing on a patio.

The next thing he noticed were the flowers. They stood in vases on every available surface, covering the coffee table and hanging from the walls in haphazard baskets. He thought he felt a breeze in his hair, too, and he wondered how many charms were needed to keep Luna’s house standing.

“Do you like it?”

Luna’s soft voice pulled him from his staring, which he immediately realised must have been exceptionally rude.

He went to apologise but held his tongue. He had something much bigger to apologise for today, and he didn’t want it to seem like he was the type of person who threw around apologies like confetti.

“You have a beautiful house, Luna,” he said, instead, and the way Luna beamed at him made it all worth it.

“Thank you,” she said, “The kitchen is this way.”

While Luna made tea, she told him about how accommodating Granger had been when Luna had approached her.

“She’d been the one to recharm the Hogwarts ceiling, you know, after everything.” Luna stirred sugar into her mug, but not Draco’s at the faint shake of his head. “And she seemed to understand why I didn’t like being inside.”

“When I got home that first night,” Draco started, “I slept in the conservatory. I was so cold. I didn’t have a wand to cast a heating charm, and I couldn’t bring myself to move to fetch a blanket. I was so sure someone would come to lock me up at any moment. I didn’t want to spend my last night of freedom surrounded by walls.”

Luna handed him his tea, and there was something like a silent understanding between them. Draco knew, then, that everything would be fine. He relaxed where he stood.

“How are you doing now?”

Luna sipped at her tea. “I like being alive.”

Draco smiled at the way she said it, the way one might comment on their favourite brand of toothpaste. “Yeah?”

Luna nodded. “Are you lonely, Draco?”

Draco thought about it. He honestly didn’t know.

“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Are you?”

“Sometimes. Not right now.”

“Luna-“

She interrupted him. “Why don’t we sit down, first?”

The couch turned out to be more comfortable than it looked. Luna sat cross legged, both feet tucked neatly underneath her.

Draco glanced around the room, unsure of where to start. His eyes caught on something, and he figured it was as good a place as any.

“You kept it.”

Luna followed his gaze to the small painting of an apple that was displayed above the door. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure if you wanted it back.”

“I don’t,” he said, “I think it belongs here.”

“Thank you for sending her to me.” Luna spoke softly. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt appropriate.

“She helped me a lot when I was younger,” Draco agreed. “She’s my great-grandmother, you know.”

He met Luna’s eyes. He wanted to know if she knew. He had no idea how he would tell her if she didn’t.

“I know,” Luna said. Her lips twitched into an indulgent little smile. “Mine too. She told me.”

He let out a relieved sigh. “That’s not the only reason why I’m here, but I do want to talk to you about that.”

Luna brought her tea to her lips, an expectant expression on her face.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

It was the same question Neville had asked, yet so different. Neville, aware of the multitude of wrongdoings Draco had committed against him, had wanted to know which one Draco was apologising for. Luna asked it as if he had nothing to be sorry for.

“I was the one who hung your shoes from the entrance hall.” It might have been cowardly to begin with the most light-hearted of topics, but Draco had never claimed to be a Gryffindor. “And from the Astronomy tower. And the gargoyles, that one time.”

Luna’s smile widened. He couldn’t help but return it.

“I knew,” she admitted. “I told everyone it was nargles.”

“Why?” It made no sense to him. “I was so mean to you. Why cover for me?”

“I always found them when I needed them,” she said, as if that made any of it better. “And if you were busy hiding my shoes, you were too preoccupied to bully the first-year Muggleborns.”

Draco winced. He really had been nasty back then. “I’m sorry.”

“I accept your apology.”

Draco braced himself. He needed to get it over with. “And I’m sorry for the time you spent at the Manor. I should have done more to get you out.”

Luna watched him. Her laughter had dried up, but there was still something light in her eyes.

“I spent most days hoping that you would be the one they send to bring us food. Not just because I knew you always brought more than you were supposed to, but because I could tell that you didn’t want to be there any more than I did. It felt like having a friend.”

Draco wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was true that he didn’t want to be there, but he’d always thought that he’d had more of a choice than the prisoners did. He’d had a bedroom and his own bathroom, even if he could hear most of what happened in the ballroom below him.

“I could have done more.”

“Maybe,” Luna said. “And maybe I could have done more to help Mr. Ollivander.”

Draco shook his head. “You could barely help yourself, Luna.”

“Helping him,” Luna started, slowly, as if she didn’t like what she was about to say, “kept me from feeling sorry for myself. He always had it worse. He was older and sicker and not made for sleeping on the floor. It made it easier to think that if he could survive, so could I.”

“You’re better than me,” Draco offered a wry smile. “I felt very sorry for myself, all the time.”

“Draco,” Luna said. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Are you asking me to leave?”

“No. I’m asking you to stay.”

“Oh.” It felt a little like whiplash, keeping up with Luna’s thought process. “Why?”

“Because I like you,” she said. “I’d like to be your friend.”

“I can do better.” Draco dug through the pocket in his robes for the thin silver band. After his conversation with Eurydice, he’d spent some time in the Manor attic. It wasn’t his favourite room on the best of days, made worse by the absence of his father’s magic. It was something Eurydice had said about being stashed there that got him thinking of what else he might find if he went looking. “I can be family.”

Luna took the ring carefully. It had the Malfoy crest on top. Small letters were carved into the inside.

“Pandora,” Luna breathed. She met Draco’s gaze. “This was my mother’s?”

“It’s a tradition,” Draco explained. “Every Malfoy child is given a ring on their first birthday. It’s a naming ceremony, of sorts.”

Luna twisted the ring between her fingers. “I’ve never had a cousin before.”

“Me neither.”

The smile they shared was one of solidarity. Neither of them fit in particularly well with the rest of the world, but Draco thought that maybe that would be okay.

Two weeks later, Draco hosted a dinner party.

“Is there a dress code?” Rolf asked when Draco invited him.

Draco glanced down at his friend’s I-clean-creature-shit-for-a-living jeans and resisted the urge to pull a face. “No. Why would there be a dress code?”

“You seem like the kind of guy who would have a dress code for dinner.” Rolf spun his wand around his fingers. He had been in a horrible mood all day and Draco had been tempted to delay the invitation until the next day. But he knew that Rolf rarely showed up at the shop on Thursdays, and Luna had already agreed to dinner on Friday, so he had little choice in the matter.

“I won’t be happy if you get dirt on my sofa,” Draco acquiesced, “But there’s no dress code.”

Rolf nodded. His silence was really starting to worry Draco.

“Is everything okay?”

Rolf seemed startled at hearing Draco speak, even though they were technically still having a conversation.

“Yeah, _I’m_ fine.”

The way he said it made Draco pause. “Who isn’t?”

“Hagrid rescued a pregnant, injured unicorn from the Forbidden Forest. He’s going to let me know when she goes into labour, but I’m worried for her.”

“Why haven’t you said anything?” He was used to Rolf telling him everything with no regard for any supposed professional boundaries that should exist between them. “I can manage on my own if you want to go be with her.”

Rolf shook his head. “There’s nothing for me to do, I’d be too agitated. Hagrid has it covered.”

“Are you sure?” Draco couldn’t help the dubious note in his voice. “I had Care of Magical Creatures with him, you know. I didn’t exactly feel like he had everything under control at any given moment.”

Rolf snorted. “That’s because you’re human. Hagrid won’t let anything happen to a creature. He’s the one I call when I’ve bit off more than I can chew. I trust him.”

“Then why are you so anxious?”

Rolf looked at him, and his expression was of such utter anguish that Draco cast a stasis charm on his potion so he could give Rolf his full attention.

“She’s not going to make it through the birth, Draco. She’s barely holding on as it is, and once she knows her foul is safe, she’ll stop fighting. I know Hagrid hasn’t realised it yet because he’s eternally optimistic. It won’t be pretty.”

“Oh.” Draco wasn’t sure what else to say. He knew how attached Rolf got to his creatures, and how much it pained him when he was forced to put them out of their misery. He does it because he’s kind and good at his job, but it doesn’t make it any easier. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“You don’t have to.”

It was clear, though, that Draco had to.

The call came three hours later, in the form of a silvery, sleek Patronus that spoke in Minerva McGonagall’s unmistakable clipped tone. The cat had barely stopped speaking before Rolf had bundled Draco out of the shop, throwing a quick Colloportus over his shoulder.

By unspoken agreement, Draco side-alonged them to the very edge of the Hogwarts property line, from where he barely managed to keep up with Rolf’s sprint to where Hagrid’s hut had always been.

Draco barely had time to admire Hagrid’s new and improved living arrangement, because soon it was all he could do to follow Rolf’s quick orders.

It struck Draco that while Rolf watched him work on a regular basis, he’d never had the privilege to return the favour. If he had had any doubts about Rolf’s capabilities, they’d vanished, now.

All three of them were soon covered in sticky silver blood that made Draco sick to his stomach. The unicorn herself lay silently on her side, taking quick, measured breaths. The only indication of how much pain she was in was in the frantic flicker of her eyes whenever Rolf moved into her line of sight.

“It’s not…” Rolf let out a frustrated sound. “Hagrid, pass me my wand.”

Hagrid scrabbled for the piece of wood that had gotten cast aside somewhere in the process. Rolf’s fingers slipped around it, but he managed to grab hold.

“Draco, I need you to hold her head. Let her know it’s almost done.”

Despite everything in him screaming that he would rather do anything else, he lowered himself onto his knees. Her glassy eyes landed on him, and she let out a quiet, pained sound.

“I know,” he murmured. “Just a little longer.”

He placed a shaking hand on her neck. He had no idea how to be comforting when she was being braver and kinder than he had ever been in his life.

“You’re doing this for your baby, aren’t you?” he asked quietly. She let out another noise that must have been confirmation. He’d always thought Rolf to be biased when he rambled with fierce pride about how smart his creatures were, but looking into her eyes, Draco could see the intelligence clear as day. And he knew, instinctively, that Rolf had been right in his assessment. “Just a little longer and they’ll be safe. Rolf will make sure of it.”

Another neigh. Draco tried not to notice what Rolf was doing, and how it made the unicorn tense beneath his fingers. It made him panic, and he did the first thing he could think of. He told her a story.

“You remind me of my mother,” he told her. “I know that she would do anything for me. She almost died for me, you know. She lied to the most dangerous wizard to have ever lived. Right to his face, while Harry Potter lay beneath her, alive and unkillable as ever. If she’d been caught…”

He remembered the terror he felt, listening to Potter’s testimony at his mother’s trial. Draco had tried to meet her eyes, as if to demand _please tell me you weren’t this stupid_ , but Narcissa had kept her eyes firmly on her own shoes.

“I was so angry at her when I found out. Do you know what she asked me?”

The unicorn was breathing easier now, her eyes blinking slowly around a single golden drop.

“She asked me why I was even surprised to hear it. Of course she would choose my life over hers every time.” His own eyes were burning now. “And even though it made me furious, I knew that I was being hypocritical. I’d do the same for her, too, in a heartbeat. It’s what we do for family.”

“Draco.”

He looked up at Rolf’s soft voice. He nodded, and Draco knew it was over.

“It’s okay. Don’t be scared. You can let go now. Your baby is safe.”

He could see in her eyes that she trusted him. It was a responsibility that he didn’t quite know what to do with.

It hurt more than he’d expected when she went still under his fingertips, and when Rolf tugged him away, he went reluctantly.

“Draco, I need to get the foal home.”

Draco nodded. He stood, taking one last look at the mother. He needed to keep his promise. The baby had to be their priority, now.

Rolf spoke to a teary-eyed Hagrid about harvesting potions ingredients, and Draco felt his stomach heave at the very idea.

The walk back to the property line was quiet, both of them stuck in their thoughts. Draco’s gaze kept being drawn back to the flashes of gold he could see poke through the blanket Rolf had wrapped around the foal. She was still too weak to stand on her own and had barely opened her eyes yet. Draco’s heart hurt all over again for how the complete innocence contained in the small body would now be subjected to the cruelness of their world. It just wasn’t fair, and he longed to keep her locked away safely forever.

“Thanks for being here,” Rolf said, just before they Apparated. “You did really well.”

“Will she be okay?” Draco asked.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to assure it.”

Draco forced a smile before turning on the spot. It took all of his trust to let Rolf go, but he knew that there was no one else he’d rather leave her with.

Draco was a good cook.

While it wasn’t exactly standard for Malfoy children to be taught in the culinary arts, his father had been an avid foodie with a traditionalist streak a mile wide. He’d personally arranged for Dobby to attend classes in classic French cooking. Predictably, the elf had taken this as an attack on his abilities as a House Elf, which led to Draco spending hours on the kitchen floor, holding Dobby’s thin wrists to keep him from boiling his toes or taking Narcissa’s curling iron to his ears.

In addition, Lucius had insisted that Draco would have no respect for the correct way ingredients should be handled without any practical experience. Dobby had felt much better when he could use his new-found knowledge to further Draco’s skills and make Lucius happy, even if he had a rather roundabout way of teaching that mostly left Draco prowling the cooking section of the library in immense confusion.

Draco was in a very good mood by the time Luna showed up at his door. He always found chopping and cutting and mixing soothing, and it helped that everything he’d made seemed to be successful enough for him to feel no small amount of pride.

Draco liked showing off. He’d had little opportunity to do so in the past three years. He hadn’t minded at the time, too preoccupied with staying alive. Now that he was slowly readjusting to life outside of a warzone, he realised exactly how important it was to feel comfortable with indulging the less wholesome aspects of his character. He liked it when people admired his things or his skills or his life. He liked having something that other people wanted, because it meant that he could share it with them if he wanted, without wondering about whether or not they even wanted it.

Draco knew that he hadn’t always gone about it in the best of ways. He’d treated everyone outside of his immediate circle as inferior and not worthy of the dirt that clung to the bottom of his shoes. He used to justify this behaviour by telling himself that he was allowed to choose who he wanted close to him, and as long as he treated his inner circle as if they were family, nobody else’s opinions of him mattered.

Everything felt different now, but Draco knew that there was a limit to how much he could change. He might be much politer to strangers now, but he was still loyal to his own. He considered Rolf and Luna to be his, which made them entitled to his home and his attention and his cooking. In return, he wanted them to like what he gave them.

Luna handed him a bouquet of various flowers from her garden with a smile that was hard to read. “These’ll keep away the Nargles.”

Draco wasn’t sure if she was being serious or teasing him, so he settled for taking the flowers from her and closing the door behind her.

“Thanks, Luna. Let me go find a vase, if you want to walk with me.”

She followed him to the kitchen. “Something smells good.”

“I hope you eat chicken?” he asked, opening a cupboard.

“I do.” Luna sat down at the counter. “My mother used to make chicken cordon bleu on my half-birthday. It’s my second favourite meal.”

“What’s your favourite meal?”

Draco filled a vase with water and took great care in arranging the flowers in a pleasant display while Luna explained the exact way one should cook corn on the cob to meet her standards.

Rolf didn’t take much longer to show up. While he had taken Draco’s assurance that there was no dress code to heart, he had at least bothered to change into a casual set of robes that Draco had never seen on him before.

“What?” Rolf asked at the way Draco eyed his clothing. “You said not to get dirt on your sofa. This is the only clean thing I had.”

“Sure,” Draco said, opening the door wider. “I’m glad you could make it. How is the foal doing?”

“She’s doing well.” Rolf followed Draco to where Luna was still sitting. “I’m keeping an eye on her for a day or two and then Hagrid and I will try to integrate her back in with her family.”

“Right.” Draco frowned, remembering how small the baby had been. “Will she be ready for that?”

“Absolutely.” Rolf smiled at Luna, holding out a hand. “For someone who had been bred as pureblood as they come, Draco sure lacks quite a bit in the manners department. I’m Rolf.”

Luna’s lips quirked into an amused smile and she accepted the handshake. “I’m Luna.”

“ _Rolf_.”

Rolf rolled his eyes for Luna to see, before turning back to an impatient Draco. “Yes?”

“Will she be okay?”

“Unicorns are incredibly intelligent and very loyal to their own, but they’re also not the biggest fans of humans. I have no doubt that the blessing would take the baby in, especially since she hasn’t started discolouring yet. We need to get her back before that happens, and before she gets too used to being around humans.” Rolf’s expression turned soothing. “I know how you feel, Draco, but nothing should be away from their family if there’s any other choice. She belongs with them.”

“Can I come see her before you take her away?”

Rolf grinned. “I’m surprised it took you this long to ask.” He glanced at Luna. “I’ll take both of you to see her after dinner.”

“That would be lovely,” Luna said. “Draco has told me a bit about the work you do, but I get the impression that he’s not the one I should be talking to about it.”

“Just as much as you shouldn’t talk to Rolf about Potions,” Draco countered. “We can’t all be talented at everything.”

Rolf sat down next to Luna. “Draco sells himself short. He has a much better understanding of magical creatures than he gives himself credit for. I think it’s his compassion.”

Luna shot Draco an approving glance. He was feeling strangely warm at Rolf’s complement and unsure of how to handle it. He stayed quiet, instead.

“Though actually, now that you mention it, I have been meaning to talk to you about the article from last month’s Quibbler about the effect of Fairy Nargles on the digestive tract of Bowtruckles.”

Luna seemed to perk up at Rolf’s obvious interest in her work. Although Draco had read the article (out of familial obligation, of course), he hadn’t found it interesting enough to be able to contribute anything of value to the conversation. Instead he busied himself with finishing up the last touches of their meal.

They ate right there at the kitchen counter, after Draco had allowed Luna to transfigure one of his spoons into another chair for him. He didn’t have space in his apartment for a dining table. He thought that he would miss the elaborate dining halls of the Manor a lot more than he did, but he found that he liked the cosiness of sharing his space with his friends.

They’d barely swallowed the last bites of their dessert before Draco was bundling them through the Floo and into Rolf’s living room.

“Welcome,” Rolf said, immediately abandoning his robes over the back of the sofa. “Excuse the mess, the company I usually keep don’t notice when some of my books aren’t shelved properly.”

Draco turned up his nose. He’d had plenty of stern words with Rolf about the placement of his magazines and notebooks at the shop. Honestly, how was Draco supposed to work when he was tripping over stray pieces of gossip every two minutes?

“I’ll have you know-“

“Yeah, you’re entitled to a neat work environment, I know,” Rolf interrupted. “Which is why we’re in my house now. My rules, take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” Draco grumbled. “Where is she?”

They followed Rolf up a flight of stairs. His house wasn’t nearly as big as the Manor, but it was noticeably larger than Draco’s flat. Rolf led them into a big room that might have previously been a study. Instead of bookshelves, it was divided into three sections that Draco thought might have containment spells around them. This was confirmed when he followed Rolf to the furthest corner of the room and felt the cool ripple of magic curve around him.

Luna asked Rolf a question about the spells he used, but Draco’s attention was immediately drawn to the golden creature that lay on a pile of hay. She lifted her head carefully as Draco approached, obviously not too keen on having him near her.

Draco didn’t try to speak to her. Instead, he took in the vibrant colour of her mane. She looked fluffier than he’d expected, which didn’t help ease his anxiety over leaving her to her own devices in any way.

“She’s doing well.” Draco didn’t bother looking at Rolf. He could look at Rolf every day. Who knew when he’d get the chance to look at a real, wonderfully perfect unicorn foal again? “Her legs are already strong enough for her to walk on her own. Do you see her eyes?” Draco shifted his gaze to where Rolf was directing his attention. “She’s alert and aware of what’s happening around her.”

Rolf dropped his hand onto Draco’s shoulder. “She’s ready. I only ever intended to make sure she wasn’t injured after the birth. I can’t keep her. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Draco nodded, not sure if he was lying or not. “Of course not.”

He trailed after Luna while Rolf showed them (or her, really, since Draco was barely paying attention) around his property.

If Draco had been less preoccupied, he might have noticed the way Luna’s gaze lingered when Rolf’s back was turned, or the way Rolf blushed when Luna complemented his semi-permanent shield charms.

It was a Wednesday, a few weeks later, when Rolf made his debut in the Quibbler.

Draco was brewing a batch of Wiggenweld Potion for a private Healer who ran a homeless shelter in Muggle London. It was a tedious process that tended to make Draco zone out, focusing on nothing but the movements of his fingers.

This was why, when Rolf suddenly let out a loud laugh, Draco was startled enough for him to drop a lionfish spine prematurely into his cauldron. He swore and made a note of it. If he was careful, he should be able to counteract it with a pinch of saffron added to the honey water, which he would add at the end of the brewing process. It was expensive, but better than starting the whole thing from scratch.

“I hope there is a very good reason for why you fucked up my potion,” he demanded of Rolf, who was sprawled all over his chosen armchair as if he didn’t have a single care in the world and wasn’t, in fact, at work.

“Have you read this month’s Quibbler?”

“Not yet.” Draco had the copy waiting for him on his coffee table and had hoped to make time to flip through it over the weekend.

“Come read this.”

Draco made sure his potion would be okay without stasis for a few minutes, then rounded the chair Rolf was sitting in to look over his shoulder.

“ _How to treat your significant other like a Murtlap_ ,” Draco read out loud, “ _and other tips from a Magizoologist.”_

Rolf let out another bark of laughter. “She’s mad as a hatter.”

“Hey,” Draco said, ready to defend his cousin.

“It’s not a bad thing.” There was something extremely fond in Rolf’s smile.

Draco narrowed his eyes. “No, it isn’t.”

Rolf scoffed. “If you want to know something, Draco, spit it out.”

“Do you fancy my cousin?”

“Yes.”

Draco balked, having not expected such a straightforward answer. He shouldn’t be surprised, really. Subtlety was never Rolf’s style.

“It’s nothing you should be worried about,” Rolf assured him. “I have no intention of hurting her. I like her enough that, even if she’s not interested in pursuing anything further with me, I’d still like the chance to pick her brain occasionally.”

“Alright,” Draco said slowly. “As long as you’re careful and respect her wishes. If I didn’t trust you around her, I don’t think I’d want to be your friend in the first place.”

Rolf took a moment to respond, and when he did, he spoke quieter than normal. “Thanks, Draco.”

Lucius Malfoy died three days later as Draco was getting ready to lock up for the weekend. He had a cauldron of Burning Bitterroot Balm that needed three clockwise stirs at 1:07pm the next day, but other than that, he was blissfully free to enjoy his weekend.

That is, until he felt a rough tug at his gut that threatened to topple him over. He grabbed at the edges of the counter and took a deep breath. It didn’t take long for his magic to settle, and when it did, he was instantly aware of the dying rose bushes that grew between the pond and the apple tree. He felt the portraits’ disgust at having their frames coated in dust, and the sigh of relief that sunk through the wood of the front door into the floorboards.

He could feel the Manor. It was his. He knew that he belonged to it just as much as the other way around. The Manor would care for him and provide him with all he needed, and in return, he’d make sure every piece of it cooperated and that every visitor who crossed the threshold paid it the respect it deserved.

It took all of three seconds for him to understand everything his father had ever tried to teach him about magical houses. It was every bit as exhilarating as he’d dreamed it to be. He felt happy. Elated, even, because this was the best side of magic. This was everything he loved about being a pureblood. He was connected, at his very core, to all the witches and wizards that had come before him and built the world into what it was now. No matter how alone he might sometimes feel, he would always have this.

But then he blinked and realised that his father was dead.

Luna opened the door after his second knock. She looked pleased to see him, even with a layer of mud smeared across her face.

“Sorry,” Draco said. He wasn’t sure what for: not fighting harder to keep Lucius out of prison, leaving his mother all alone, disturbing Luna’s evening. “I don’t…”

“What happened?” Luna asked. A little crack formed in the mud that was rapidly drying along her chin.

Draco didn’t want to say it. He did anyway. “My father died.”

Luna stepped in close, slowly, so he could deny her touch if he wanted. When he didn’t, she wrapped him in a hug. He knew she was most likely smearing mud over his shirt, but he didn’t care. She was family. He wasn’t alone.

Luna managed to get him situated on the couch and went to rinse her face. When she came back, she was dressed in a green T-shirt that looked much too big for her. She handed him a cup of tea.

“Your face looks soft,” he mumbled.

“It is.” Luna sat next to him. “Do you want to feel it?”

He ran the back of his finger along her cheek. “Soft.”

He wrapped both hands around his mug and sipped. It was warm and spicy and seemed to settle something in him.

“Have you heard from your mother?”

Draco shook his head. Every time he started thinking about everything he needed to do, he seemed to have trouble breathing.

“It’s okay. Draco.” He looked up at Luna’s soft urging. “You can have tonight for yourself. Just drink. We’ll face the world tomorrow.”

He took another sip, and another, and another, until eventually, he felt okay about the burning behind his eyes. 

Luna went with him to see the Manor the next morning. She’d given him the option to take more time to process, but he could feel the house growing restless. It needed him.

It had been less than twelve hours and there was already a noticeable difference in the way the Manor reacted to their presence.

“Oh,” Luna said. It was quiet, hardly more than a puff of air.

“Yeah,” Draco said. “Come on.”

They walked up the winding pathway. It was gravel. Draco had always appreciated the crunch under his soles.

The front door loomed before them in all its detailed glory. Draco pushed lightly, and the door swung open for him at the faintest touch of his fingertips.

He stepped into the entrance hall. He knew what it used to feel like to have the faint buzz of his father’s magic brush against his skin. He wondered if there was a noticeable difference now that it was his magic that was tethered in the foundations.

“We need to go from room to room,” Draco said. “Some of them will need some convincing to accept a new Lord, especially after the damage Voldemort caused.”

They started on the ground floor and made their way up. The first sign of resistance was in the dining hall.

It was clear that his magic hadn’t managed to breach the darkness that had happened here. It felt empty in the worst way, and he heard Luna catch her breath next to him. He squeezed her hand in reassurance and led them forward.

The table was the same one where he’d witnessed the death of Charity Burbage. It was where Lucius had first surrendered his wand, and with it, the last bit of dignity he might have managed to hold on to. Draco gripped his own wand tighter.

In the vast empty space next to the table were spots where the goblins had fallen as Voldemort mercilessly unleashed his wrath on them. It had been a massacre that somehow felt worse than any that followed in the upcoming days. Draco wasn’t sure whether it was because he’d watched Voldemort’s mood shift, entirely without prelude, into something dark and vile that sent chills down his spine. It might have been the certainty he felt that that would be the last straw for his family. They’d let Voldemort down one too many times, and everyone knew that he didn’t forgive. He could picture the metallic scent of blood, the sound of it giving way under Voldemort’s bare feet and Nagini’s scales. It was so red, and everywhere, and he really hadn’t wanted to die yet, but it had never felt more inevitable than in that moment.

Luna’s tightening grip brought him back to reality and he took a deep breath. He needed to change course.

He held up his wand but didn’t bother casting anything. He thought back further, to a time when the Manor had been worth his childhood admiration. This was the same table where Narcissa had spent hours teaching him about cutlery, and why it was always important to use the correct fork. It was where they used to have dinner when he came home from Hogwarts with stories of Quidditch and Harry Potter’s insufferable attitude.

His father always seemed to be much more approachable over dinner. Draco owed this table, this room, for all the stories he knew of Lucius’s Hogwarts days. His father could be cold and malicious in his beliefs, but he had cared for his family. He had cared for Draco.

He took a breath, reached deep for his magic, and pushed.

There were no sparks or dramatic shaking. Instead, he slowly felt the tension ease as the room yielded to his control.

They repeated this process in the ballroom, where Draco could still hear the screams of Bellatrix’s victims and smell the cold sulphur of the Cruciatus Curse. He thought instead of learning to waltz for the first time. His mother and Violet Parkinson had arranged it, much to both children’s chagrin. Taking dancing lessons came very close to the bottom of the list of desirable activities for any ten-year-old. At the time, Draco had been too red in the face to see the value of the entire thing. Now, he couldn’t help the nostalgia he felt at their innocence, back when stepping on Pansy’s toes was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

In the cellars, it was Draco’s turn to squeeze Luna’s hand.

“I can do this alone,” he offered.

Luna shook her head, even though she was white as a sheet. “If I don’t face it, it will have power over me for the rest of my life.”

Draco led the way down the narrow steps. It smelled like damp and dirt and metal. Narcissa had Vanished the contents of the room, leaving it eerily empty. Draco could feel an inexplicable breeze brush against him. He shivered. In contrast to the dark magic that had been clear as day in the other rooms, this one was somehow worse. It felt like a vacuum, sucking at the magic that ran in his veins. It reminded him of the emptiness that arrived right before one encountered a Dementor, and he felt a fresh wave of sympathy for his cousin at being trapped in here for weeks.

“We slept over there,” Luna pointed out. “It would be completely dark with the door shut. Mr Ollivander suggested that it would be easier to move around if we could use the wall as a guide.”

“I’m so sorry, Luna.”

“It’s not your fault.”

For the first time, Draco had no idea how to take control of the room. It had always been rather bleak and miserable, even before there were living, breathing prisoners being kept inside. It was likely a result of several generations of Malfoys deciding not to bother claiming the room, since the purpose of it was to serve as a prison, and nothing more.

“It’s so strange,” Luna said, “to be back here now. It feels a lot less scary with the door open.”

“It’s strange for me, too,” Draco confessed. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“It’s not the room’s fault that bad things happened here.” Luna stepped away from him, eyes roaming over the low pillars. “But it might still feel guilty.”

Draco concentrated on the feeling he’d had right after apologising to Luna. It had been freeing to realise that he no longer needed to hate himself on her behalf, for things that had been largely out of his control.

It took a while. He had to circle the perimeters of the room several times, leaking magic as he went. Eventually, so slowly that he barely even recognised that it was happening, he felt the emptiness dissipate.

“I like the feel of your magic,” Luna commented. “It’s warm.”

Draco smiled tiredly, and they moved on.

He left the conservatory for last, knowing that it wouldn’t cause them any trouble. Even before he had been Lord of the Manor, the room had felt like his.

He was right. The flowers were brighter and the sun warmer than ever before. The couches seemed to lure them closer, and Draco let out a relieved sigh when he finally sat down. It was already late afternoon, and he was starving, having only eaten a hasty sandwich that Luna got for them when she went to stir Draco’s potion.

“I’m knackered,” he said, rather redundantly, around a big yawn.

“I asked Rolf to bring dinner,” Luna said. “He should be here soon.”

Draco nodded, letting his eyes drift shut.

Draco had played around with the idea of moving back to the Manor all day. It wouldn’t be awful, he supposed, especially now that the house answered to him. But then he thought of his flat, and how hard he’d had to work to make it his, and he felt reluctant to leave. He knew that he was still young and had a large part of his life ahead of him. It was inevitable that one day he would outgrow the flat. He knew with complete certainty that when that day came, he would return to the Manor and rule it the way it deserved.

He felt a twinge at the top of his spine. Someone was at the front door. Somehow, he knew that whoever it was posed no danger to him or the Manor and assumed that it had to be Rolf with the food. Too tired to get up and meet him, he pushed a few thoughts in the direction of the portraits. It didn’t take much effort, and he felt them move to show the guest to where Draco was waiting.

He found it very convenient to have an entire house at his disposal.

The door to the conservatory opened and Draco caught the scent of the greasy pizza that Rolf so loved to make Draco eat. It wasn’t bad. In fact, Draco had grown to like it quite a bit, but Draco had already invested so much of his time into making a scene about it that he could hardly concede his point now.

“Thanks for providing me with some dead, racist tour guides, Draco,” he drawled, setting the pizza down on the coffee table. He handed Draco an envelope before sitting down next to Luna with a soft smile in her direction.

Draco flipped over the envelope and immediately recognised his mother’s handwriting.

“I found the owl on the way in,” Rolf explained. “She was quite old and confused, poor thing.”

Draco nodded absently and tore open his letter. He read quickly, eyes skimming over the short paragraphs.

“What does it say?” Luna asked, already helping herself to the pizza. She looked just as tired as Draco felt, and he made a note to buy her something nice as a thank-you for keeping him company all day.

“She has a portkey to Wiltshire tomorrow morning.”

“Are you moving back to the Manor, now?” Rolf asked. He’d had to listen to Draco’s excessive rants about the shortcomings of his very Muggle flat. Draco still thought it ridiculous that the plumbing couldn’t sense when the water was hot enough to dig blisters into his skin and that the bed didn’t warm up the space where his feet would be before he climbed in, but those things weren’t the be-all and end-all of Draco’s life.

“Not yet, I think,” Draco said, carefully folding his letter. He’d talk to his mother the next day. She would need his comfort, and if he had any hope of scrounging up the energy to give it to her, he had to allow himself to rest. “Thank you for bringing food.”

Rolf waved him off. “Any time, mate.”

Draco ate the pizza, and some of the grease dripped onto his robes. Rolf laughed at him when he tried to Scourgify it to no avail, while Luna commented on the unique colour it had created on his robes, and how she thought that he should solve the problem of the stain by transfiguring the rest of the material to match. Eurydice, luckily, knew a spell that got rid of the stain, and Draco was much more careful as he continued to eat.

He went to fetch Narcissa at the Portkey Office. She smiled tiredly. He hugged her for a long time, until he felt like she would stay upright if he were to let her go.

“Okay?” he asked. She nodded, and he Apparated them to the Manor. 

Narcissa unpacked quickly, then met him in the kitchen. He handed her a cup of tea, which she took gratefully.

“I missed you,” she said.

He smiled softly. “I did, too.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“How was he?” Draco asked eventually. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know, but it felt appropriate to ask.

Narcissa looked down. “Some days were worse than others.”

“Did he hurt you?”

Narcissa looked up. Draco kept his gaze firmly on hers. 

“No.”

“Good,” Draco said. “You were a good wife.”

Narcissa shook her head. “I loved him. I didn’t do anything more than love him.”

Draco’s parents had done a lot of bad things. They’d been involved with bad people and dragged Draco down with them. They hadn’t always set the best example for him to look up to, but he knew that he would be hard-pressed to find two people who loved each other as much as they did. Love was a complicated thing, and the fierceness with which he felt it for his mother and Luna and Rolf sometimes made it difficult to breathe. 

He would take it over the alternative, the emptiness that came with feeling like there was nobody in the world who wanted his affection. 

“I’m not moving back yet,” he told her. 

Narcissa’s smile was soft. “I’m glad.”

Draco wasn’t sure what to make of her reaction. “You are?”

“Yes.” She reached over to squeeze his hand. “You’re figuring out how to live away from all of this.”

“I thought you said I shouldn’t run away.”

“You haven’t. You’re going to make a magnificent Lord Malfoy, and the reason for it is because you know that it is possible to continue living even without the title and the Manor and the money. You’re gaining perspective, darling, and that is something that a lot of purebloods sorely need.”

“I guess.” He gripped his mug a little tighter. “Will you be okay on your own in this big place?”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “You’re only a short Floo-trip away. And besides, the roses need some attention.”

Narcissa eventually excused herself to take a nap, tired from travelling and the emotions of the past few days. Draco remained seated at the kitchen table, lost in thought.

“What are you thinking about, my child?”

Draco glanced up. Eurydice had made herself comfortable in the armchair that was usually occupied by a fat, sleeping kneazle that might have belonged to Septimus Malfoy at one stage. 

“Everything keeps changing,” Draco said. “A few months ago I couldn’t fathom the idea of staying in England.”

“Have you changed your mind, then? About leaving?”

“Where would I go?” he asked, reflecting the words that she’d said to him right back at her. 

“I told you that you were not alone.” She smirked. “But you have always struggled with listening to your elders.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “There is no way you could have known how things were going to turn out.”

“Perhaps not,” she agreed, “but I have been around for long enough to know that there is no shortage of love in the world. If you go out looking for it, there is a good chance that you will find it.”

Draco stood. “I’m going to leave now before all of these _emotions_ rub off on me.”

“Fine, child.” She waved him away. “I will wait right here until the next time you need me.”

As Draco walked through the halls, there was no denying that it was his. This was where he belonged. It didn’t matter how far he strayed, he would always, inevitably, end up right back here.


End file.
